Greedy Goblin

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Sign of weakness

Clearing the trolls from my blog has a negative effect. While 99% of their "ideas" are plain cursing and stupidity, in 1% they write something that gives an insight how socials work. This 1 % is not rational, therefore I can't get it from other intelligent people. It is stupid, but still "true" in a sense that socials work that way.

Tobold reflected to my post about trivializing heroics with 2 healers. I received lot of true and intelligent comments (and some useless nonsense to be deleted). But none of my commenters revealed why Blizzard is not in a haste to hotfix it like they did with WGClean. If they were busy to fix outdated content, why don't they stop me from making the DD queue 10 hours long, causing major dissatisfaction among M&S? It would be pretty easy: if you queued as DD, you can't switch into tank or healer spec.

One of Tobold's commenters answered it. His gem was covered by paragraphs of ad hominem attacks and nonsense, so I'd most probably delete his comment after reading the first two lines. But as Tobold's site is not mine, it got published and I read it all. He said that 2-healing is a "sign of weakness that few would take that route even if it would help them".

I would never think of that. I mean I want to complete the heroic, so my decisions are made based on success chance and length, maybe consumable and gear prices but would never think of what other people think. Win is a win. The social thinking is so unnatural for me, that I couldn't see the pitfall of the 2-healer system even though I wrote a post explaining why there are players who don't play to win. Going in with 2 healers is "cheap".

The #1 aim of the social is to gain peer respect/liking. He may have other goals but #1 has priority. He does not do anything that would make peers think bad about him and ready to go great lengths to amuse peers.

Since Sunday, every day I queued up for one random heroic with 2 healers. Either with 5 people from the guild or with 4 + random healer. Vortex, Lost City, Stonecore and Halls of Origination fell one by one. Trashpacks without some must-be countered ability are oneshotted without anyone being below 60%. No need to sit down to drink. Bosses without oneshot mechanics oneshotted the same way. Oneshotting bosses are easy to learn as you have to focus only to the mechanics. All healths were topped until someone made the big mistake and died. There was no need to concentrate to many things. If healer had to run, got thrown away, ran to LoS, no problem, the other kept everyone alive.

But exactly because it is so easy, socials find it "cheap". As another troll at Tobold's said "or you could just not suck and play with one healer :|". I read many bloggers who have not yet doine heroics. I've heard many guildies who left their instance with 2-3 randoms for being impossible. I know that most people don't roll over heroics. There are some elite who outskilled the heroics so much that they were doing them on the first days in leveling greens. But for the majority it is hard. Still, most of them would never do something "cheap" like going with 2 healers. It would make them look bad. They rather come up with excuses why don't they do the heroics at all or why did they fail (others sucked, no gear).

Doing "cheap" things is the way to win. This way is blocked for socials by the own prehistoric subroutines in their brain. This can be a unique selling point to The PuG: a guild where you can "act cheap" and no one will give a damn as long as it works.

Another perfect example is "top" gemming and enchanting. Currently the top gems/enchants are extremely expensive. WotLK and leveling gems and enchants are cheap. The stat difference is in the 1% range for the overall character strength. Yet people are buying the expensive stuff because "being cheap" with gems would be a "bad signal" for guildies, especially officers. Not here. As long as you do your job I can't care less what you are wearing. Yes, it's true that if you can't, my first look is on the inspect, seeking for lack of gems, enchants or green gear, but only to give advice. If you do every "signal" fine and still can't do your job, I still won't take you.

I think your idea has a lot of merit but also some flaws. Nothing as silly as an egotistical sign of weakness of perceived "cheap" way of doing it, though.

I think it might be harmful to gear up and progress using the two-healer method because it's not actually teaching a single healer how to effectively do their job, whether it be triage healing, wisely managing their mana, etc. Later on in a raid situation, where you will not have the "extra" healer, these healers who have not been forced to learn their class properly will find themselves oom and overwhelmed.

I am also surprised you advocate this method. Heroics are definitely DOABLE with one healer operating at a high skill level. This is a fact. In my opinion, using two healers falls under many of the flaws you see in "social" groups - with someone else to carry them and cover for their mistakes, neither is under any pressure to perform at maximum efficiency. Doing 2k DPS and being carried in a group is basically the same thing as healing inefficiently/ineffectively without concern because the other healer is also contributing heals. Both are relying on the output of the other members to lead to success, rather than one's own personal skill.

I was in a "weak" raid in the past. When we first killed Algalon on 10 man, a healer from other guild said that the only reason why we managed to do it was because we had "a trivialize mace" (Val'anyr). I believe that happened right before ToC came out or one week into patch 3.2. After that we have killed Algalon several more times with two healers (on our first kill we had three if I recall correctly), but that wasn't enough for some people to believe that Val'anyr wasn't the only reason why we managed to down a boss. Even though we had to face numerous bugs while working our way to kill Algalon (several times he ignored me while I was dispersed, so he pulled everyone out of the realm and Big Bang wiped the raid; Ardent Defender procs put our main tank out of sync with the raid almost every attempt - he had to teleport, if he didn't die, or healers would be "out of range" while trying to top him on next attempt), other guilds still managed to find excuses for our kills.

So after we got bored of ToGC 50 attempts runs, we got back to Ulduar, collected 226 gear and got "Herald of the Titans" and that was the only thing that made other guilds finally shut up about luck and gear. So unless you're trying to prove a point, don't bother listening to socials.

@Rades: the carried 2K DPS is just that, carried. He gets a run and gives very little in return.

However in a 2-healer setup every other members gain too. Both healers get some slack, able to heal mostly with the most efficient spell. Tanks and DPS get topped up all time, getting some slack at non-oneshot fire mechanics. The price they ALL pay is longer run (assuming they could do it at all with normal setup).

If you play on U.S. servers and are looking for a guild running under the same rules as "The PuG", including having the freedom to clear instances the "cheap" way, head over to Korgath (PvP) - US and join "PuG Inc". You can find the details at pugsquad.blogspot.com. Levels 1-85 are welcome as long as you can correctly answer a couple questions to prove you read the charter/rules!

I understand your point but I think some bosses need more dps than 2 DD are able to provide. Unless they are very good DD. But if you have good DD in your group why would you need 2 healers?

I did my first heroic on evening of the 8th December with my holy pally just after reaching 85 (I had two days off my job, paid holidays ofc ... yes I am a moron). It was BRC and the system told us we do not have required ilevel to enter it so we had to run to the entrance (guild run ofc). It was hard but we beat all bosses after a few wipes.

I don't see any reason why Blizzard should prohibit spec change in LFG. I'm just starting to wonder how long they will "hold the line" before they simply nerf the dungeons like they did in the TBC.

And my advise to all healers is. If you are running OOM during heroics the DD are doing something wrong.

I used to run Wrath heroics with two healers when they were new and getting gearing up in fresh quest greens/blues. Slower, but made life much easier.

That still doesn't take away from the point that you haven't proven that it's a way for poor players to faceroll through. At the moment, you're only demonstrating that good players (4/5, 5/5 guildies), playing conservatively (2 healers), have nothing to worry about.

I'm somewhat disappointed that you chose not to approve my reply regarding questing at 85 for reputation / plot. It was a perfectly valid point that you didn't consider.

The only thing against 2 healers: It's no challenge, and therefore boring. If I want boring, repetitive button pressing, I can go to the gym, at least that gives me abs (which of course are for impressing people first and foremost, still kinda silly).

Again, Cata isn't actually a game of skill, it's just an addictive grind. It wouldn't actually be all that hard to make DPS matter with new mechanics:- Slow enrage. The longer a mob lives, the more damage it does. +10% damage for every 5 seconds. Boy, would DPS be required.- Non-trivial DPS play. Instead of mashing buttons in the correct order (while watching television) there should be interaction*. Imagine something like Street Fighter, where you constantly have to block and attack, use combos, special moves and manage your resources like your mana bar / super bar / burst. / combo points. Now THAT I would play!

But all of these changes would make the game very elitist. Ever heard of Guilty Gear XX Accent Core? It's huge! At least in the tiny fighting game tournament circle, which is incredibly elitist (see Sirlin's Playing To Win).

@Squishalot: you posted it to the wrong post, was completely offtopic.

@Wayne, Anonymous: the reason of trivializing is to prove that despite Blizzard claimed to make Cataclysm hard, it's still not hard. It is just hard on tanks and especially healers. I'm at war with the M&S IRL, and I want to reveal and battle all ways where the M&S gets freebies. The Cataclysm heroics are handing out rewards for nothing to M&S, while the tank and the healer works his ass off. It is even worse than WotLK, because back then it just handed out pixel gear. Now it also hands out social reputation: "look at me im l33t i did heroics". No, the tank and healer did them, you just tagged along.

Again: some bosses are exceptions and doing them requires and proves DD skills.

@GevlonAt which point does the dps count as carried? 8k dps is in may experience about average among those who are capable of clearing HCs atm.

So how about someone doing 4k? A 5 man group with 3dps doing 4k each (and a tank doing less) will not complete anything. Would that make a 4k DPS a leech that gets carried?

He is doing 50% of his job... much like a healer in a 2 healer setup. And with just 2 dps there is slightly less to heal as well (dps gets more unavoidable damage than healer; especially melee dps).

They don't get carried per se as in the group could not succeed without them, but as soon as someone is capable of getting a proper group, using 2 healers is charity.

P.S. How about 2 tanks? Warriors would get rage starved while not tanking, but do other tanks have similar limits? Atm good tanks do as much damage as decent dps. And there's the contingency factor if one of them dies. So 2 tanks + 2 healers + 1 dps = faceroll.

If the goal is completing the bossfight, then there are several bosses where EVERY DD are carried in a sense that the boss could be done by a tank and 2 healers.

In bossfights with enrage, the group DPS can be calculated and one DD must do 1/3.5 part of it or carried.

If defeat is not an option and the goal is to do it fast, then the DD is carried if he is significantly below the other DDs. "Significantly" is debatable, but "below the tank" is obvious, as having 2 tanks would be faster (bigger pulls, more AoE).

After clearing all heroics there are a few things i would like to state:atm there are bosses, especially the optional ones, which can be incredibly difficult with one healer and the current gear.(shadowfang, blackrock if you have no cc) But in most cases, if you need 2 healers to do the fights, its a sign that you lack skill or gear. Not surprising, if you think about your way to cheat itemlevel requirements.Since my main concern is farming for rep/justice points, and this is done much faster by killing everything except one boss with 3 dds and then going to the next random, taking two healers would not be very helpful.And i would like to see your strategy for raids. Take 4 healers on trash and bosses without enrage? Again, slowing down everything, while showing that you clearly should farm more gear (for example by doing heroics faster = more loot)

"Significantly" is debatable, but "below the tank" is obvious, as having 2 tanks would be faster (bigger pulls, more AoE)."

Interesting point. I watched often that dps are below the tank. A two tank two healer setup with a good dd could be interesting for hard trashpacks. This needs one tank with dps spec (bosses) and one healer with dps spec (enrage / critical dps).

More interesting would be the direct damage comparsion. If a 2 tank 2 healer setup makes more overall damage it´s clearly a benefit to 1 tank 2 healer. (2 tanks would scale down the revenge buff and some damage from blocking etc. the exact outcome has to be tested)

Ultimate would get 3 tanks & 2 healer or 2 tanks 3 healer, but the last would get you into laming I suggest and 3 tanks would lead to a confusing aggro situation and the ultimate lack of range dps.

The thesis in this article exactly mirrors some experiences i made earlier this week. I think what you speak is so true that it hurts.

A old friend from a social guild, which i was member of in the past, told me they wiped in a heroic for three hours and stopped trying when mobs respawned. I linked him your article about trivializing heroics, in order to help. He said, that this wouldnt be "really" beating the instance and he allready knew why they were failing. He said, the reason was his iLvl, as it was two points below the recommended value for the instance. The two point difference means that he had about 99,8% of the recommended value. He was sure that once he had obtained the 2 points, the instance would be easy.

Well, i stopped arguing there, as his ideas reminded me alot of why i left the guild.

I remembered when you used to write your solo posts. I never was quite sure if you did it to prove that WoW was easy or that you acctually enjoyed the challange. I know that I enjoyed reading them.

In Cata it seems that you have proved that 2 healers are the easy, most efficient way to go. But why are you not writing 2 pages post of each instance you bring 2 healers? Perhaps because it's not a challange. I sure would like to see you challange the game more then you trying to break the system.

Anyway, finaly a comment about your post. There is probably other ways as well to run instances. How about bringing 5 self healing tanks or 4 tanks and 1 healer. Tanks have higher dps than most of the DF DD anyway.

A small guild group I normally run with had myself and another who were usually the heals when we would raid. As my main spec was holy(paladin) I was able to use my PvP spec which involved more of my dps abilities and making things such as exorcism cost effective while keeping my healing still very good. This actually worked out for our group in many instances. We would use our druid healer and I would heal as needed. I was only able to pull moderate dps being holy but the spec allowed me to chain cast exorcism. The 2 healer system can work and should be used as a crutch to help everyone obtain gear to single heal it in time. Any advantage other than obvious bugs should be taken.

We employed this method the other night, and cleared Heroic Stonecore for the first time. We had a Boomkin/Resto Druid who swapped in and out of healing, while I stayed Holy on my Paladin throughout.

It's a great system for learning a dungeon, because you can experiment with both setups. Some bosses are more demanding on the healers than others - in Stonecore, there are a couple of encounters where he went DPS while I healed.

It's an effective enough system that I suspect it may become "standard" on some servers.

I agree with Gevlon 100%. 5 man heroics put the burden on tanks and healers in such a way that the dps can idiot-roll the entire instance without putting in 50% of the attention and focus required by the tank/healer.

I wish blizzard would put in boss mechanics that targets the dps randomly at the early stages of the fight and causes them to blow their survival cooldowns and maximize their dps output.

Imagine a 5 man instance where a single dps was teleported out of the boss fight and put into a "room" where he had to fight his way out to get back to the boss fight. This room would contain mobs that require concentration to defeat (like turning to avoid and stun ability, etc.) The longer he stays in the room the more dps the mobs do to him.

Meanwhile the the boss can still be defeated with a 1 healer, 1 tank, and 1 dps (or 1 healer and 1 tank but the boss kill will take 15 minutes without any dps).

This places the burden on the dps to show he isn't face-rolling/tv-watching his way through the instance during boss fights.

But these types of mechanics would slow the game down (lots of scrubs would die and force long boss fights). And the lack-luster dps would complain and blizz would be forced to act for fear of losing revenue.

I feel that Blizzard likes to put the pressure on tanks and healers because people who play those characters tend to not mind the pressure and pick those toons precisely for the challenge.

But I see the 5-man game as somewhat broken when dps can function at 25-50% efficiency whereas the tank and healer cannot.

I did not think you would keep going on about this 2 Heal heroic Dungeon stuff for more than one Post.I totally agree that for your average Wrath Player it is probably better and easier to do his first few heroics with two Healers. It’s also ok for some of the mediocre Casuals. But at some Point it has to stop. While two Healers can be an excuse when you are doing heroics in Quest Blues and Greens they should not be needed anymore when you have assembled your first Round of Dungeon Blues (anywhere between 329 and 349). The Cata heroics do to a certain Level prepare the Players for what awaits them in the Raids. While all Wrath heroics and Normal Mode Raids where in “See all Content” Mode, in Cata there are Mechanics and AEO that actually kill you if you fail.. or for that Matter your whole Raid. Even as an asocial Player who does not give anything on what others think, there should be a minimum of Progression in ones gameplay. While doing a repetitive Action you have to be almost mentally challenged if you do not improve while doing so (i.e become faster, more precise, etc.).

I guess what puzzles me the most is that while you made one very interesting post about how below average Casuals/Socials can easily do heroics and all the while maybe keep the M&S out of the LFG Tool. What I now find strange is that you keep doing it while in a Guild Group. Shouldn’t you demand more from your Guild in Terms of CC, AOE Avoidance, Interrupts, etc?

Despite of being asocial, social, casual, elitist or a mixture of said things you eventually have to actually do Progression in some form. And despite of Blizzards many flaws you should always try to do so without exploiting or mismatching the current Challenge.

And a bit OT: @ Squishalot I can not begin to describe how sad it is to have done your first Wrath heroics with two Healers and also admitting to have done so….

@Ulsaki:I have to watch how my mage will do at 85 when I recover him, but on my DK (still in blue-greens at 333 and below) I´m at 9-14k at singletarget dps atm (9k at less fortunate encounters) in multi-target situations I hit 24k+ nor hit or expertise capped. (the lack of CC and beeing a melee are the only things that keep me away from dpsing seriously and yes I´m aware that HB is extremely OP in AOE situations)

To the revengebuff etc. I had a little comment in the brakets.

I´d just say if the dps can´t keep up to the tanks I´d rather try to take 2 tanks. The exact scaling of revenge buff and similar effects will be told by experiment, since I´m not that nerdy to math up countless encounter situations.

Ok now I feel the need to reply. Your 7th paragraph points out a issue with you and your so called elites :).

Yes heroics harder then before but in the end blizzard only returned to its vanilla roots, or tried to. And yes going with randoms is almost doomed so don't go with them or go with as few as possible. The last two expansions have learned us how to AoE trash pull and zerg trough instance. So in combination of that and this new expansions you will notice that just with a few upgrades you find yourself AoE'ing packs again * Small note, single target dps seems better damage whise for a few classes/specs then AoE*.

So if you say that most people have issue with heroics to who do you refer? I call them M&S, sure you have M&S who top it but people that have trouble with heroics are also M&S in my opinion. Because really,this expansion is all about reacting quickly and use common sense. Move out of fire idea and use your class ability's not only those that do damage.

That being said. Who are you in the picture of M&S, Elites, and ??? mr Gevlon? I don't consider myself being a elite player. We evem did some heroic bosses with 2 healers but later it turned out the shaman class has just more troubles then the paladin so we could have just done it with only the pala. And yes you don't need amazing dps for heroics it will go down eventually it just takes time. But you're saying (in comments) that with 2 healers you can all slack abit makes you a M&S who knows how to make gold but can't play wow on a higher level. There is a huge player base between M&S and Elites (elites are skilled players but mainly I know it better attitude people in my eyes).

After experimenting with the two healer approach, it definitley has merit but does not make up for having a poor LFD group.

I'm a decent healer, but que'd up as dps and got HHoO. The extra heals didn't solve the problem of a wrath era tank who couldn't pull well (I told him to read your last post since he seemed like someone who could be taught, and he did actually improve throughout the dungeon). Unfortunately, the two healer approach also didn't solve the problem of dps that wouldn't CC or kill the mob that was healing. And the dps definitley weren't about to switch from the boss to chaos portals.

The other healer eventually switched to dps, and actually turned out to do much more dps and CC then the other two dps. Suddenly the trash and bosses were getting killed, and the heroic got a lot easier.

So the point I'm trying to make is that you have to take into account what kind of bad dps you're dealing with. If they can be taught not to pull aggro and avoid the fire (I make sure to let them die on trash so they get the message before a boss fight), then 3 dps can be a lot easier than 2 dps and 2 heals.

I see this same idealogy of failure in Eve as well. People will refuse to utilize force multipliers such as electronic warfare (especially ECM) or logistics ships because they are 'cheap', and get wiped out by a fleet half their size.Entire alliances refuse to place spies among the ranks of their enemies because 'spying is dishonorable'.

These concepts of honorable combat (ha!) and percieved social weakness originally developed for good reason; by establishing the strictures of 'honorable' fighting and 'socially acceptable' contention, nations and individuals could identify those among them who were ruthless enough, and sufficiently committed to victory, to use those tactics currently disapproved of by the moral majority. Since their willingness to do anything to win identified them as a threat to those around them, enabling their opponents to persuade neighboring countries or other competitors to join in the fight against them, so as to eliminate them before they grew too powerful through their use of forbidden tactics.

Even today, in the real world, these idealogies see constant use. Consider the Geneva Convention restrictions against torture, or the Ottawa Treaty's ban on anitpersonnel landmines; both are effective tactics, either to gather intelligence on the enemy, or to eliminate his soldiers, and neither kill a man any deader than a bullet to the head. The only reason to restrict (or to try to restrict) them is to hamper the efforts of those nations who follow them, and identify those who are willing to do whatever it takes to win.

In burning crusader where heroics were relatively hard until you massively outgeared them, this was somewhat standard.

Pretty much every pug group I went with back then would look specifically for either off healers or good CC among their DPS.

I was on a fairly low pop low progression server at the time, so it was easy to develop a reputation, and I found once I hit 70 that fairly quickly I got pug invites almost as easily as a healer or a tank, and many of the people on my server knew I could be counted on to perform my magey CC duties appropriately. People who could legitimately off heal, or provide passive heal buffs like shadow priests, were also highly prized as DPS. It was very hard to get a group as a pure damage dealer if your class didn't have a good CC ability or heal spells. My wife when playing her druid in balance, always kept an eye on healing needs.

In any case, assuming it doesn't become trivial for your typical M&S to outgear the heroics to the extent that you no longer need any real skill/strategy with a standard setup (a la wrath post 3.2), I suspect this will become common again.

@GevlonI'm a devout reader of Gevlon's blog (even though critically minded), and recently it occured to me that my personal experience doesn't quite fit your ideas of M&S. I pug a lot (yes, Cataclysm heroics too), and I actually have seen very few morons, actually almost many as elite players. So I'm wondering, how long have it been since you verified his ideas about Arthasloldks in real world of heroic pugs? How often do you pug, and not 1 person, but full pugs? You know, reality check is good for any theories, especially ones which are about politics, society or economics.

An addition to the point about how M/S may view using two healers as 'cheap' is that if it becomes a popular way to run heroics, more players will do it. At this point, the M/S decides that it is no longer 'cheap.' He decides that it is the cool or easier way to do it, and then joins in, possibly going to far as to ridicule people who choose not to use a second healer.

We are conditioned to go with the crowd, a purely social "ape" instinct if you will. the M/S will follow what they feel to be the prevailing opinion. Now it is cheap to "exploit" a heroic with two healers. Tomorrow it may be the "smart" or "cool" thing to do, and only dummies would run with 1x healer.

I'm pretty sure that you've discussed this particular phenomena before, and I think this is a good example of it.

I really enjoyed the Halls of Origination 2-healer run.At first I thought it was too easy, but later on in the dungeon things got a lot harder and seemed pretty much impossible to do with just one healer.It did make me very curious how I would've managed if I was the only healer.Overall I'm happy, healing is challenging again :)

@Campitor "I agree with Gevlon 100%. 5 man heroics put the burden on tanks and healers in such a way that the dps can idiot-roll the entire instance without putting in 50% of the attention and focus required by the tank/healer."Simply not true from my experience. Baron Ashbury (interrupts), Commander Springvale (adds), Corborus (crystals), High Priest Azil (adds, voids), Admiral Ripsnarl (dps and switching), Beauty (CC), Assad (whirlwinds, triangle), to name a few. In all these fights the role of dps isn't easier than the role of tanks or healers, and unless the 2 other dps are super good, no way a 2k dps can do those bosses.

Most people would never dare to question a social norm. The less they think, the more likely they are to accept all kinds of arbitrary standarts as a norm. Deviating from a norm is cheating to them.

People ran wotlk heroics in icc raid gear and were pretty happy with it and thats definitely easier than cata heroics with the 1/2/2 setup.They dont think its cheap because its easy. Socials love to have it easy. That way they can concentrate on being "awesome" and impressing peers, instead of having to deal with complicated fight mechanics, which are only a hassle to them, not something that can lead to being awesome. A social guy doesnt need the satisfaction of mastering a difficult fight to think he is great, which some of us do. All he needs as a validation of his greatness is the occasional high dps (the times i have seen raids wipe because DDs thought its more important to DPS hard instead of stepping out of the fire isnt countable any more), a fancy title he got by grinding or doing old raid content or a purple item which others dont have, regardless of actual usefullness of said item.

I would argue that people think the 1/2/2 setup is cheating/cheap, because its not the standart. Every deviation of what "has to be like this because it is this way" is a potential threat for some people. If blizzard would have established that its legit to go 1/2/2 instead of 1/1/3 (for example by a modification to the dungeon finder tool), people would happily done so.

Now if Bliz found this to be a problem they would do things like force a role check on instance and not allow talent switches unless you had a player drop. Since they allow talent changes any combination is legal and it is up to your group to decide what combination to use. There is a large range of ways to do things. Slow but steady(sacrifice DPS for extra tanks/heals) or you could even try a GoGoGo mode where you have a tank and 4 DPS with a small ability to heal(ie Boomkin or SPriest) With the right CC the tank may not take that much dmg as only one mob would be up at a time and put down fast.

In the end it is up to the group how they do things and if it is considered "cheap" then some people need to learn to think outside the box and return to the whole reason they even joined an instance... to finish it.

IMHO, using two healers is as cheap as using CC. That is to say, it's as smart as using CC.

The point of any run is to succeed. Doing anything to cause a failure on purpose, doesn't make sense. If someone has a heal-capable class, they don't need to heal as they may not like it. But if someone is willing to admit that they can't solo-heal an instance, I would appload them to queue as dps and offheal, or dual heal.

For an average player, heroics are terribly hard, I've joined two so far, and failed miserably at both. Of course for players who hand-picked the group with a whole bunch of CC and their best guild healer+tank, than heroics should be fine or easy.

I'm not sure I understand the problem set that's driving the inclusion of multiple healers. You imply a couple issues that the 2-healer setup addresses: 1. Unsuccessful runs (not clearing the instance), 2. Time lost sitting and drinking, 3. Wipes to non-oneshot mechanics, 4. HP not staying topped, and 5. Emphasis on healer/tank performance. (I apologize if I missed some other obvious ones).

But, what I didn’t see you address is the cost of the 2-healer setup, and as a diligent goblin, I’m sure you know there is one that stands out--time. Consistently throughout your posts you harp on the M&S for not seeing the value of time (eg: “it’s free because all I had to do was farm it”). And yet, the cost of the two-healer setup is the same thing. In fact, you are paying a premium (exchanging less dps for the *perception* of greater survivability and success) for your 2-healer approach, with no proportional gain.

You neglect to point out that there are other no-cost ways to trivialize a heroic—crowd control, priority-system single-target dps (because AOEing pulls these days actually add time) and knowledge. You tipped your hat to all of these in your recent post detailing “How to Pull”. In fact, if you were to watch a video of the top guilds running heroics in those first few days, what you’d see is exactly these no-cost solutions in effect. What you’d also see is players who excel at dps (something you’ve claimed has no effect on success) because they understand that it effectively does what your proposed second healer is doing—lessening the pressure on the other healer and tank.

So while I think I understand your intent here—to ensure that a heroic is completed and to reduce the responsibility imbalance that is present in current groups—I think you’ve actually set the bar too low on this one. Your “cheap” solution is not cheap at all, and in fact, enables the inefficiency that characterizes M&S.

If the arguement is: not all players will be raiding; then my repsonse is; Why do they need heroic level gear then? Keep them in normal modes, where the content is the same, and the risk much lower.

Quit teaching poor players that it's OK to continue to play poor because you figured out a loophole in the system. As you said, "social players are looking for social recognition #1". Boot them from your groups when they do something stupid - that negates their #1 reason for playing, and forces them to get better or quit. Your allowing them to be terrible by double healing 5 mans, both allows them to gain their social recognition, and disallows them incentive to get better.

"At the moment, you're only demonstrating that good players (4/5, 5/5 guildies)"

this is so socially in-group that I can't even begin to describe. The fact that you're assuming that just from the fact that people are in the same guild makes them good players is ... social.

It is totally possible to have a group of guildies which simply sucks. The same argument was used over and over on Undergeared, that what we did was easy because we were guildies. Check your premises. Being in the same guild doesn't automatically make people play better. The PuG was exactly stated as an effort to simulate pugging within a guild, therefore it shouldn't matter if the players come from the guild or from LFD. The only thing you know from being "The PuG" guildies is that they don't engage in social crappiness.

Gevlon's statement is that his group is finding it pretty easy to do heroics when they go on a 2-healer setup, while other groups are reporting to be struggling at it.

Having extra healing (1.5/2 healers in 5-man, 3-healers in 10-man raid) is, IMHO, a very smart move, especially during the learning/gear process. It allows room for mistakes and inadequacies in gear/experience.

Personally I am a strong believer that any hybrid DPS class with the ability to heal (shaman, druid, pally) SHOULD help with off-heal as needed, particularly if the fight involves spike damage to the tank or lots of aoe/group damage. I have gone as far as setting up a healing focus macro [when I group as DPS] and set tank or healer as focus.

Back in 40-man raid days, it wasn't uncommon to have secondary/off-healers watch main/tank healers on some fights. Blizzard might have said 5-man dungeons are designed with 1 healer in mind, but locking yourself into that mantra (due to ego, stupidity, ignorance) is just silly.

Personally I feel I accomplished more in a 5-man if I sacrificed big DPS numbers by offhealing the tank/healer and in turn save the group from a wipe.

A good cheat is always fine. Why make goals harder then they need to be without some sort of purpose behind it?

For me there is a purpose to doing the heroics properly and it is to avoid the raids being the place where you learn to play your class. I honestly had a priest when I pugged into a LK fight that wasn't using Cure Disease...he was trying to mass dispel necrotic plague. This should never happen. If you are geared enough to be doing high level raiding you should know your class inside and out. The point of heroics in my opinion is for raid preparation not only from a gear standpoint but from a don't stand in fire one.

To that note healers shouldn't be two healing content on the basis that they won't have to learn mana management until they are being wiped in Bastion of Twilight. But if you are confident that you could single heal heroics and have multiple times why wouldn't you make it easier? All it would mean is less time wipeing to pointless trash.

All I know is that disease in Tol'vir that damages everyone nearby sure gets noticed in single healing and you make sure not to do extra damage. The other sort of learning curve for DD is not taking avoidable damage just as standing close together when mobs are using chain lightning for example. Being able to overheal just takes away these issues.

This is a good post. It reminds me a lot of the response to Athene's world first 85. I was talking to a guildmate about it, and he started off by saying it was cheating, which he quickly realized was an indefensible argument, so he toned it down to saying it was "cheap". I'm sorry, but if I want to get world first in anything, I'm going to use every "dirty" trick in the book as long as it wont get me banned. As far as the 2 healer thing goes, I usually heal, and mostly queue with guildies, but I can see how if you queued with randoms, 2 healers would be extremely nice to have. The only trick would be to get 2 10k+ dpsers, but you can always boot the bads and get new ones if their dps isn't up to par.

@Magma: What do you mean, 80% of the player base can't step into heroics? Do you mean can't defeat them, or literally can't get into them due to ilvl issues? Is the 80% number taken from somewhere or did you just estimate? If it's taken from somewhere, I'd be interested in seeing it. If you estimated, what is the basis for your estimate? I realize that heroics are more difficult than in wrath, but 80% seems like a ridiculously high number. They're not THAT difficult.

I think it is absolutely funny that they thank it's cowardly or cheating to use 3 healers but that it's ok to brag about clearing an instance that you vastly out-gear. I've always lived by the work smarter not harder motto.

I disagree that socials wouldn't 2 heal because it would mess with their e-peen.

They wouldn't do it because it requires original thought and extra preparation. Socials are by nature lazy, and want things to come to them easily.

And Gevlon, you said that you read posts by socials because 1% of them give you insight into the others. Since when is it logical to generalize observations of 1% of a population to the population as a whole?

You're solution wouldn't work for the 2 healer problem. I haven't hit heroics yet (should tonight, just barely) but with your descriptions it doesn't sound like a Moonkin/Elemental/Shadow Priest in their healing gear couldn't handle the healing duties for the period the main healer is CCed by the NPC. And you are a gear change a way from being in full DPS spec.

"The fact that you're assuming that just from the fact that people are in the same guild makes them good players is ... social."

Interesting. Since Gevlon has claimed exactly this on numerous occasions - that people from his guild are better than randomly selected players - I guess you are calling him social. Or perhaps you just think his long list of rules is worthless. Personally, I expect the people in the group are better than average due to self-selection, but there is no conclusive data one way or the other.

As far as Undergeared goes, the original group that went to Naxx was average at best. This is why they stalled out in Ulduar. After replacing 90% of the raid with people who (according to Gevlon's logs) were 50-100% better, you managed to get halfway into ICC before stalling out again. Certainly the guild tag did not magically produce good players, but neither was the final composition a random selection.

There was no screening in Undergeared raids. No selection whatsoever. EVERY raid I participated in we took the 10 people who were online (when we had that many). Gevlon never very rarely had to make a decision on whether or not to take someone, and when I saw him having to do it, he always chose the new guy, the one he didn't have any prior knowledge to his ability.

Undergeared had the success it had because we wanted to do what we were doing, felt capable of it, and thus we did it.

3) Yes. And if a choice between two people filling the same role had to be made for progress sake Gevlon would choose based on performance. If it ever came to that. But as the posts also clearly state: we often had attendance issues, and most of our raids were made from the people who were online.

It's not just that bringing two healers is a sign of weakness, but also that it's slow and that it allows poor play. When you bring two healers neither is learning how to solo heal a heroic and the tank and DPS aren't being forced to learn how to avoid damage or use non-damage/threat abilities.

If you're running with a partial premade - which you need to do anyway for a two healer setup - just bring competent people who understand how to use CC and interrupts. That way you can one heal it, which will allow for faster runs and will also allow people to properly learn their roles.